


Selkies and Ships with Wings

by IvyLee



Series: How to Breathe Underwater [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mermaids, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid, Canon-Typical Violence, Good Loki, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Feels, M/M, Merman thor, One-Sided Attraction, Protective Thor, Sailing, Thor Feels, Unnecessary Biting, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1884684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyLee/pseuds/IvyLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is an old God who they say could tread the horizon; caught between the heavens and the hadal, the sky walker. In all his life, Thor has only seen the feat realized once.</p><p>By the boy who walked into the night sky and carried a piece of it with him for the rest of his life. By the boy with the winged ship.</p><p>But a sky-treading human cannot divert the wrathful conscience of a kingdom in turmoil, an oncoming storm, or the inexorable beginnings of a supernatural war.</p><p>Besides; every merman knows that true love is the stuff of fairy tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tell me of selkies and ships with wings;

The ocean chose me but I fought her.

Teach me to soar with the sea as she sings,

Teach me to breathe underwater.

 

* * *

 

This one was not like the others. Thor was sure of it.

“The humans have no respect for any species at all, including themselves,” his father had lectured him, when he was still too small, and his tail too weak, to flap up to the surface. “They live only to consume. They rely on their tools and their crutches; too physically weak to survive independently. Too heavy to swim without a shell to float in. It’s ingenious, yes, but, Thor, listen to me: despite that ingenuity, or perhaps _because_ of it, they are monsters. They are soulless monsters, and they will hurt you, and they will hurt our people if you let them.  And one day our people will be _your_ people, Thor, and as King, it will be _your_ responsibility to protect them.”

“Yes, father,” Thor had said. _Of course, father._

_Listen to your father. Heed the advice of the council. Attend to your people._

But this one was different.

The first time Thor saw the silhouette of his wooden boat, he panicked, because one human always meant more humans, and that meant many humans, and many humans could hunt quite efficiently. And Thor was utterly alone.

He swam deep beneath the hull, cautious, tail fidgeting in anxiety. But when he saw that there were no others, he didn’t leave. He just waited.

He wanted to know what the human was doing.

Thor followed the boat out of the archipelago, over the coral ridges of the reef and into the ocean. He lowered his depth, swimming steadily to match pace with his target, and copied its lazy circles, wondering with increasing fascination why the human (because it was such a tiny thing, there must only be one human) on top didn’t stop to catch fish, with his little metal tooth. He rolled occasionally to compare his position with that of the boat’s. _What on Earth is he doing?_ Thor wondered. He was going so _fast_! What did he hope to achieve? What was he chasing after?

If he _was_ chasing something, he wasn’t going to catch it; all he had ahead of him was the open sea.

In the end, Thor succumbed to his own curiosity.

He swam about half a mile away, turned around and peaked his head above the surface, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was the human was doing.  
Then he balked, so surprised that he almost forgot to breathe through his lungs.

The boat had a _wing_.

 

“A sail,” Fandral told him, both eyebrows raised, completely unimpressed.

Thor folded his arms. “I _know_ what a _sail_ is, Fandral, but this was a little boat, not a big ship. A very very little boat with a massive white wing on top. And it was flying around on top of the water, going this way and that, so naturally, like it was caught in a slipstream, for hours on end. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Thor had gone to Fandral because he knew the most about humans. Before he’d settled in Asgard (well, at least, this was how the story went, but then again Thor was well aware that Fandral was full of shit) he’d crossed every one of the seven seas, hunting for his fortune.

Thor’s tail was not small, or weak, or vulnerable, now. In fact, he had an embarrassing penchant for preening and grooming it; running polish over its gilded crimson scales until they gleamed like the sunset on the water.

So he worked on it subtly as he drifted behind Fandral, twirling the tips between his fingers when they stopped.

“Hm,” Fandral pondered. He was meandering through a trench, searching for fossils. “So it was a little boat so tiny that only one human could fit on it?”

“Yes.”

“And this human… it was using this… ‘big wing,’ and controlling it so that the wind would push the wing, and therefore the boat, where it wanted.”

Thor chewed his lip. “Er… I think so.”

Fandral faced Thor and leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head, flashing an infuriating grin. Thor let go of his tail and clasped his hands behind his back, expectant.

“Sounds,” Fandral said, “Like… a sailboat. With a sail.”

From above them both, Sif gave a single barked laugh.

Thor whipped around and glared. “Oh, go fuck a lobster!” he shouted. “You didn’t know what it was either.” Sif shrugged, and went back to prying open oyster shells with her sharpened teeth and nails . She was exasperatingly indifferent.

Thor turned back to Fandral, slightly flustered. “It’s not _really_ called that, is it?”

“Yes, it really is,” he said. “So named, because of the sail.”

“But why- what was he doing? It’s too small to actually sail anywhere at all!”

Fandral shrugged. “Pursuing its perverse human desires, I suppose. Scheming about which territory to poison next. You shouldn’t follow human ships, Thor, they’ll catch you and skin you alive and make wallets out of you. Trust me, I used to hang out with selkies.”

Thor scoffed, rolled his eyes, and bit Fandral halfheartedly on the arm.

 

They said that you could leave the Red Bay heading south and keep swimming for the rest of your life. As the shore nucleated behind you, the ocean rose up and out on either side, levelling the surface of the world in an expanse of pure, unfaceted blue. After that, the ocean’s only threshold was the untapering line of the horizon.

The boy came out in his sailing boat almost every noon, heading straight for the horizon. And, from then on, Thor did too.

The human almost never looked behind him, so once they were far enough out, Thor could hide in the wake of the boat and watch him from above the water.

When it was foggy, he could come close enough to see the acid green of his irises, and the shine his skin took on when the water condensed on it.

He was definitely a boy. And he was quite lovely.

He had beautiful black hair, black as the night sky as if he’d let it simply envelope him once and carried a little piece of the darkness with him ever since. Hair as long as a mermaid’s, and an elegant graceful attitude that he seemed to carry in his psyche as well. He was not afraid of the sea, or angry about it, as some humans seemed to be. He seemed to just accept that it was there, and that he belonged in it.

 _He was born to the wrong race_ , Thor thought.

Once, he turned around quite sharply, directly facing Thor, and peered out across the ocean. He had his usual smile on his face, the one that said he knew a secret.  
Thor knew the human couldn’t see him. Human eyes were weak and didn’t understand refracted light. But it still sent a shiver down his spine, and he sunk deeper in the water, slightly stunned.

 

The first time he leaned out back first across the water, hair whipping in the wind, Thor thought he was about to fall in. But he didn’t. He just hung as if caught between the sky and the sea, completely weightless.

His body was almost horizontal, and rigid as the hull of the boat itself, but his expression was one of experience and confidence. Thor couldn’t help himself; he darted right towards the ship and turned belly-up next to it, so that the boy’s shadow fell across his chest.

Thor had to fight a crippling urge to snatch up at the boy’s lovely hair as the wind whipped it, or at the necklace he wore (a dragonet charm that glinted dully) as it dangled tauntingly beneath him. Part of him itched to drag the human by the hair down into the depths, and feel the life leave him; the other was silently abhorrent of the notion of bringing him harm.

The human’s back was practically skimming the surface. Thor was so shallow that he had to angle his tail backwards to keep it from splashing out of the water. In that moment, Thor knew, if he reached up, he could touch him. Not to yank or pull or tear. Just to make contact.

And if the boy turned his head only ninety degrees, faced downwards instead of forwards, then Thor would be seen.

But he wasn’t.

 

That night, when Thor was going home, he passed a single rowboat, too far out in the water. Two mermaids were making casual conversation with its occupant under the lamplight, and they had the atmosphere very calm, and very thick.

Just after he overtook the boat, he heard a thick splash behind him, and the light went out.

Thor picked up his pace.

 

Mermen from Alfheim were going missing. They were being hunted again, said Sif. Plucked out of the water like fish. Slaughtered. Or, even worse, kept to die slowly as pets.

“So we’re going to go up there tonight, stir up a gale or two, and show them what it’s like to watch their loved ones die,” Hogun sneered, terrifyingly sober.

Thor put his hand on his hip.

“Killing humans isn’t going to make them stop attacking us,” he explained, voice grave.

Sif spat, expression furious. “And _sitting_ here playing _peacekeeper_ isn’t going to teach them that they can’t just _take what they want_ , Thor! They’re _animals_! They just consume and consume until there’s nothing left. If they had their way, we’d all be their centrepieces!

“Enough is enough.”

Thor shook his head, standing his ground, although he knew there was nothing but Sif’s childhood bond with him keeping her from accusing him outright of cowardice, right then and there.

Hogun kissed his teeth at Thor in disappointment. “Suit yourself,” he growled, turning to go.

Part of Thor wanted to call out to him. But there was nothing he could say, so he didn’t.

 

Thor began to notice, from that point on, that, when the human peeled himself out of his funny cloaks and dove into the water, or challenged a storm with a grin on his face, it wasn’t just intrigue or attraction that Thor felt.

There was fear there, now, too.

 

There was another person on the boat today. She was very pretty. She had black hair just like his, and a pleasant laugh. The boat was too small for her. She did not belong on the boat.

Thor hoped she fell in.

The human had been explaining to her how the boat worked; she didn’t understand. So eventually he gave up and they chattered about the weather, and about sales of materials that Thor had never heard of, and so on.

“Oh, Loki,” the girl said. “taxation is so important! It’s the ideal medium through which to regulate the economy. Just look at the system, alright, for a little bit, before condemning it. You see-“

 _Oh, Gods and monsters_ , Thor thought to himself, _I’d_ rather _be skinned alive_.

Thor had listened to the two humans making small talk for almost a whole hour. At this point, he had no choice but to give up and leave, shuddering at the depressing tedium that was, apparently, human conversation.

He couldn’t help but smile a little, though, as he went. All that banal noise had been worth enduring, he thought, for that one golden word.

_Loki. His name is Loki._

 

Thor swam with Loki into the rainy season.

The storms kept coming, both natural and manufactured. Mermen and humans kept dying. Loki was infuriatingly stalwart, and undeterred. He sailed over every current in the area, under every sun, and every day went back to the harbour just a little more exultant because of it.

Thor tried his best to calm the weather for Loki during the day and deal with the angry Asgardians at night. At the end of it all, he was starting to feel more alone than he ever had before he’d known the human.

 

Thor was brooding to himself, waiting for Loki at the edge of the bay. He had a sneaking suspicion that today was going to be one of those days where Loki just didn’t come out into the water at all.

Perhaps it was for the best. Thor was hardly feeling amiable.

The thing was: Loki wasn’t evil. He wasn’t ugly, or stunted. He loved the sea. He loved to sing to himself when he thought he was alone. He had a habit of walking along the beach at dawn before he sailed, and throwing starfish back into the ocean.

And he’d been bred by two humans. And they probably weren’t evil either.

The girl he’d been talking to that day wasn’t evil. Taxes seemed to be horrible horrible things, but they weren’t evil.

Even those old men the mermaids dragged down weren’t evil. They were just… well, horny. And stupid.

And mermen were not evil.

Yet they were fighting. Fighting to the death, and that’s what his friends were doing, too, almost every evening. They’d have dinner, play a game, and then join a group and find a ship to sink their collective teeth into. And it was true what Sif had said, that humans, when working en masse, just kept on hacking away at something until they were told very brutally to stop.

There was something that needed to be reconciled, here, but Thor didn’t know what it was, or how to do it, and it was driving him mad.

When Loki didn’t come, he spent the whole day swimming aimlessly: tossing rocks, seeing how deep he could dive before hitting the ocean floor, or having to turn around because he was swimming blind. He even latched on to a shiver of sharks, following them far enough out to not recognize his surroundings, until one of them noticed him and tried to eat him. All the while he was deep in thought.

The only conclusion he managed to reach was this:

If there was anyone who knew what to do, it’d probably be Frigga.

 

By the time Thor was most of the way home, it was already dark. Above him, a tempest was raging, but the world below the surface was completely different; completely calm. Dark, and heavy, and empty.

Well, almost empty.

Two haggard mermaids and a gruff, one-armed merman, one by one, approached him from the left, nodding politely as they passed before continuing on their way.

Thor tracked their trajectories visually. Around 4 miles away, somewhere not far from the human harbour, he could see, mermen were coalescing in what should be empty water.

Thor surmised correctly that they were heading towards the eye of the storm.

There was a ship.

There had to be.

He continued swimming for around four beats of his tail, and then stopped again. _Shit_ , he thought.

He swam towards the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Posts this and slinks back into the shadows, avoiding eye contact with Under the Bridge followers*
> 
> Man I love mermaid AUs. This was just going to be inevitable. Hope you like it. Stay tuned. 
> 
> I really appreciate feedback, guys. Your reviews sustain me! Please let me know what you think, even if you hated it!
> 
> Chapter edited June '15


	2. Chapter 2

As Thor approached the ship, part of him wondered what he’d been thinking. He supposed that he’d hoped he could find something – anything, really – that he was missing. It certainly wasn’t as if he could try to change anything, at least, not right now. There was no way he’d get the 50 or so mermen to stop what they were doing. Furthermore, it was already to late; the ship was in pieces, mostly underwater and being dragged by its own weight towards the ocean floor, along with most of its occupants.

The ship had been wrecked by the storm, but, at the turbulent surface, some of the more efficacious mermaids were thrusting themselves bodily out of the water onto what remained of it, so that they could tear it apart by hand. And around Thor, there was a frenzy; mermen darted everywhere they could in as little time as possible, colliding with debris and each other, gleefully eager to cause chaos.

Thor hovered at the edge of the swarm, slightly dazed.

Which was how Fandral found him, seconds later.

“Thor!” he shouted, elated, over the buzz. “ _Thor_! I knew you’d come around. Are you alright?”

Thor shook himself and nodded, as Fandral clapped him on the shoulder. “In which case,” Fandral told him, “you should join in the fun. Sif! Look who I found!”

He dragged Thor into the throng.

Fandral, who was trying very valiantly to do around four things at once, lost Thor in mere moments.

Thor darted around, looking for his friend, trying to avoid ramming into anything, failing. Out of the corner of his eye he could see one of the humans. She was wearing a dress just like the one Loki’s friend had had. She was crying out for help, reaching desperately for the surface, but, surrounded by as many mermen as she was, she didn’t stand a chance.

And there was another human, further down, struggling viciously. This one had guts, Thor thought.

And then his heart stopped.

Everything stopped. Absolutely everything. Thor felt weightless, suspended in time.

It was Loki.

Right there. Around thirty feet away from him and five below. It was Loki.

He was kicking out savagely, twisting his torso and aiming his elbows at his several captors’ faces, expression one of absolute terror.

His beautiful hair was being torn out at the roots. His dragonet floated in the water, chain snapped.

Thor didn’t move.

He had seen humans drown before. Their fleshy insides couldn’t handle the water. They simply dissolved away, until there was nothing left but the bloated skin of a corpse for others to weep over.

Loki’s struggles were weakening. He was losing air in bubbles.

Loki was going to drown.

Thor shot himself through the water with as much force as he was physically capable of, his heart beating so fast in his throat that, were he a man, he might have choked on it.

He tore through the frenzy, reaching the mermen restraining Loki in seconds. Beating wildly at them, he tried to break the fingers gripping Loki's arms, scratching blindly at chests and faces. In response to their perplexed expressions, he hissed out loud, mad and desperate.

One merman snarled and tried to throw a punch at Thor; Thor bit him in the throat.

The others decided to back off at that point.

Thor didn’t wait. He grabbed Loki by the waist from behind, dragging him close, and clamped a hand over his mouth and nose, trying to stop the bubbles that were escaping them. Loki pushed against Thor, trying to free himself, but his efforts were feeble. Thor easily overpowered him.

With the human clasped like a prized possession to his chest, Thor swam down and away, leaving the tumult of the wreck behind them.

Thor had never swum so fast in his entire life. He paused only once, to see if they were being followed. Then, once he was sure they were far enough away, he started moving up, arcing towards the surface until he was travelling directly towards it.

Loki wasn’t moving.

Thor, were it possible, swam faster.

He broke the surface like a dagger through flesh, thrusting Loki upwards, both hands on his waist. Thor held Loki’s entire upper body in the air, treading water, propelling them both upwards with consistent beats of his tail.

“Breathe!” he screamed over the tempest. He shook the limp body in his arms. “ _Breathe_ , damn you!”

Thor couldn’t feel a response. Between the noise of the gale, the mayhem of the storm around him and Thor’s own moments, he couldn’t even tell whether Loki was already dead. He tried to calm the storm, tried to beg it so subside, if only for that crucial moment, but, given his own state of mind, the effort was hopeless.

Thor glanced around himself, panicking. The towering waves obscured his vision, but he could see the coast nevertheless - the nearest land to him was the end of the beach near the human harbor, on the other side of the crescent moon bay.

Thor didn’t waste another second. He grabbed Loki by the mouth and nose again and dragged him under the water.

He swam two hundred feet and then broke the surface again. Held Loki above the water. Counted to seven. He thought he heard a choking breath, but he wasn’t sure.

He forced them underwater, and swam another two hundred feet. Held Loki above the water.

_Swim. Breathe. Swim. Breathe. Come on._

This could all be pointless. It could already be too late.

Thor’s gills were working like mad. He felt like he was being physically torn apart. But he didn’t stop.

_Swim. Breathe. Final push._

He reached the shore.

Thor held Loki above the water by his collar, struggling furiously to drag them both out of the waves, scraping the front of his tail on the sand. He heaved them onto the rocky beach, and flipped Loki onto his back.

Thor leaned over Loki, trying to protect him from the rain that thundered down all around them. The human was motionless.

“Please,” he said, clasping Loki’s head tenderly, hands on either side of his face. He tilted it this way and that, inspecting it for signs of life. With his middle fingers Thor felt for movement in gills that weren’t there. He thumbed Loki’s cheekbones, eyebrows drawing together in a pleading expression. “Please, please, please,” he begged. “Oh, Gods, _please_. Open your eyes. Just- _please_ , just-“

Thor began to cry. It hit him like a shockwave and he couldn’t stop. He shook Loki’s shoulders, softly, and stroked his hair away from his forehead, hoping desperately to encourage a response. Loki was bleeding at his hairline, and from his nose.

His lips were blue. His skin was marbled; patches of soft pink and unnatural white.

Eventually, Thor stopped trying to get Loki to move.

He placed Loki’s head, as gently as he could, on the ground again, and lay his head on Loki’s chest, weeping into the material of his shirt. As if, by encapsulating Loki with his body, Thor could diffuse life into him. As if just being nearer to him could make everything better again. “You stupid boy,” Thor sobbed, fist bunching into the material. “You stupid, _stupid_ boy.”

Loki didn’t respond.

Thor closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against the tears. He was such an idiot. He was such a _stupid idiot_.

He turned his head so that he could see Loki’s face. “Open your eyes, Loki,” he ordered, setting his jaw like a stubborn child. Loki did not obey him.

Then the ground moved.

Thor sat up straight, and looked at the sand where Loki lay. He felt it with his palms. It was still and firm.

No. Something had certainly moved.

A thought occurred to Thor. His face fell into a sort of blank, neutral expression. Overcome suddenly with a sickening hope, he swallowed and tried to remember what he knew about human anatomy.

Utterly still, he placed his palm on Loki’s chest.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then Loki’s ribcage rose, gradually and slightly, and fell.

Thor waited five more seconds. It happened again.

Of _course_. Human lungs. That must be what human lungs felt like when they expanded.

Which meant that Loki was breathing.

Thor’s stillness became desperate, damned, hope-infused violence. He tore Loki’s shirt open at the front, feeling for the breath with both hands. It came steadily; a subtle rise and fall. Thor’s breath, conversely, was ragged and fast, as he hunched frozen and coiled over Loki, glancing alternatively between his upper body and face.

Loki was breathing. Loki _kept_ breathing. It was faint, but it was there.

Gradually, Thor allowed himself to unwind, somewhat. Loki was alive, he thought. At least for now.

Thor closed his eyes and bowed his head, absolutely sick with relief. He put his head in his hand, shaking it in mute denial. The other hand, he kept just below Loki’s suprasternal notch, feeling for that blissful rise and fall.

Thor sighed.

Loki was alive. Loki was going to live.

He closed his eyes.

He felt completely empty from exhaustion; on the other hand, he wanted to scream with joy. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

Well, he was already doing one of those things.

Thor tilted his head back to face the sky, and sent out a silent prayer of thanks to every God that was and ever had been. Human and merman both.

Then he collapsed on the ground next to Loki.

  
  
Thor awoke he didn’t know how much longer later, and shot up, gripped by fear. Nothing had changed; the night was upon them, rain still fell. Loki was motionless beside him.

Thor felt for the breath; it was raspy, but still there.

He relaxed.

Thor spent several minutes building up the energy to gingerly drag the two of them under an overhanging rock, so Loki could be drier. Once Thor had arranged Loki so that he was completely beneath it, he crawled back to the shore and swam away.

  
  
He stole three spongy blankets from the open window of a family’s houseboat. As he swam back to Loki he carried them over his head, compelling the rain not to fall around him with all of his being. It finally conformed to his will, and ceased, at least in his vicinity.

When he reached Loki, he tore off the remains of the ruined shirt and cast it aside. He used one of the blankets to dry Loki off. When Thor touched Loki’s face, the boy moaned softly and shook his head, trying to fight to consciousness. Thor jerked back in surprise; it was his first sign of life since his near drowning.

But Loki did not move again.

Thor wiped the blood from Loki’s upper lip, nose and temples, and tried to clean the gashes in his skin on his arms and at his waist. Then he folded the material beneath Loki’s head to comfort him. Thor laid the other two blankets over Loki’s chest, hoping to keep him warm.

His lips were still blue.

Despite the reassuring movement, Loki looked less alive with each passing minute.

Thor lay by his side and took his hand.

“I love you,” he told Loki, gently. In the black silence of the night, heard by no one at all, the admission seemed all the more damning.

 

Thor lay awake by Loki’s side until the morning. Loki would murmur softly to himself in the night, weak and panicked, but he never opened his eyes. Thor stroked Loki’s hair and petted him, telling him not to worry, telling him that he was safe and that soon he would sail his remarkable winged boat again.

There was no assurance in Thor’s voice.

Dawn creeping across the sky was like an inescapable curse. The tide was rising to meet them, and with it came the consequences of the night before; debris from the ship, beams and cloth and parts of sail. Surely before long there would be corpses on the water, and a search party to meet them. Thor was running out of time.

When Fandral recalled the many times he’d narrowly escaped the jaws of death, he did it with a pride in his voice, as if there was a victory to be had in flirting with oblivion and not surrendering to it.

There was no victory for Thor, no pride. Only fear.

In that moment, watching Loki, who lay placed on the sand like a dead man, he could not perceive that there might come a time when the human might sail again, or grin into the sun, or laugh at his lady friend’s jokes. The marks carved into his skin seemed too irreversible, too final.

Thor was so, so afraid for Loki. And now he had to leave him.

 

He waited ten, maybe twenty, more minutes with Loki before the voices came.

They came from around the bay, and Thor knew that with them would be humans, come for the wreckage and to scour the beach for bodies and valuables.

By the time they appeared - two grown men, a young girl and her little brother - on the ridge beyond the beach, Thor had already slithered clumsily back into the ocean, where he lingered quietly behind a jutting rock, waiting. He wasn't comfortable to leave Loki to the mercies of strangers, but, realistically, he had no choice.

It was the boy that spotted Loki first; breath hitching, eyes widening. "Father," he murmured, edging towards Loki, then halting and creeping back again. "Father. There's a body here."

The man he was talking to looked up, dropped his satchel in surprise, and swore.

The children reached Loki first. Not sure what to do, they hovered over him, uncertain, but were quickly pushed aside by the older men. "He's Laufey's boy," one of them noted, hand over his mouth, horrified at the discovery. The other, who knelt over Loki with one tentative hand on the boy's throat (which made Thor’s tail writhe in anxiety), nodded in agreement. Then he recoiled slightly, sucking in air. "Silas," he hissed, "he's still alive."

The men shared a glance. Then they quickly started working on Loki; rearranging him, checking for broken bones, binding his wounds with strips of cloth and trying unsuccessfully to rouse him.

As Loki was fussed over, the girl stood back, brow furrowed.

Working her jaw in thought, she glanced at the ground around herself, before her eyes settled on something in the sand that made her freeze in surprise.

Carefully, she picked it up, holding it to the light, where Thor saw what is was and swore to himself.

He could have hit something; he'd left scales on the beach.

"Mr Lane," the girl murmured, slightly stunned. "Mr Lane. _Look_."

The man called Silas glanced around at her, breathing deeply as he caught sight of the scale. The little boy and the other man saw it too, and then, as one, the group looked out at the ocean, drawing together in trepidation.

Not averting his gaze, Silas cleared his throat and cautiously gathered Loki into his arms, like a bride. He was obviously afraid, but fought hard not to show it.

Then he stood up and addressed the sea.

"If you can hear me," he said, "then- thank you."

Thor sunk down under the water and swam away.

 

After the humans took Loki away, Thor didn't see him again for a long time.

He waited every day in the bay, and at the beach where Loki'd been found. But Loki’s boat remained tied to its post, and the beach stayed empty.

After a day or so a memorial was held by a group or mourners at the dock, but Loki’s face was not among the crowd, and his name was never mentioned. Thor didn't know where he was, or if he was permanently hurt.

He didn't even know whether Loki still lived.

Thor imagined Loki trapped on the land, sick or dying, unable to move or sail or swim. Perhaps he was perfectly healthy, but had been imprisoned by the humans, for associating with a merman. Perhaps he was locked in a dark cell somewhere, alone and afraid and unable to understand what he had done wrong, or to reconcile the deaths of his friends. Maybe they blamed him for the shipwreck.

Maybe they had killed him for it.

Either way, Thor was completely unable to help him, and knowing that ate away at him every day.

Thor did not attend council. He couldn't eat, or sleep. His worry crippled him. His friends were affected by his mood too, and lazed, melancholy, in the palace gardens, guilty and depressed.

He couldn't stand it.

Several times he returned to the ocean floor where the ship's carcass had settled, to trawl the depths in search of the lost dragonet. When he finally found it, he tied it around his neck, for lack of a better idea, and went to the beach to wait for Loki again. The necklace was the last part of him that Thor had to hold on to.

Thor was afflicted once again with the horrible premonition that he was going to spend the rest of his life like this; that nothing would ever get better, that he would never reclaim any of the happiness he'd lost when Loki had almost drowned that day. Grief was a terrible thing.

And yet, exactly three weeks after the shipwreck, on a sunny autumn morning, Thor swum to the beach to find none other than Loki strolling along it as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Just like that.

Just like that, there he was; dressed too warmly for the weather, arms bandaged, and leaning on an old branch for support. But it didn't matter. He was there. Walking along the outside of the bay. Humming to himself, throwing starfish back into the water as he went. And just like that, Thor could _breathe_ again.

He swum loops beneath the waves, laughing at his fear, terrifying schools away. He didn't care; Loki was here, Loki was back. And of course, Thor thought, of _course_ he was. He was _Loki_ , after all, treader of skies.

Thor swam to the surface again, watching, trying to keep himself still but squirming in delight at the same time.

Loki walked all the way along the beach, slowly and steadily, limping slightly. He got to the overhanging rock where where he'd been found, and then lowered himself down to sit in front of it. He faced the ocean, just shy of the lapping tide. Thor could see that he was anxious to avoid the water; nervous of it as he'd never been before. It wouldn't take much to guess why.

Thor half expected Loki to look right at him, with that all knowing smile on his face. Which is why he wasn't surprised when that was exactly what Loki did - except his expression was solemn.

For a while, neither of them moved, but Thor knew that Loki could see him.

Eventually Loki cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I took so long," he murmured, almost to himself. Then he leaned his cheek on his palm, waiting for a response he apparently knew would come.

Thor put his hands over his mouth. _Oh dear_ , he thought. This was definitely not an interaction his father would approve of.

He flattened out his scales with his palms, swallowed loudly and pushed himself up through the waves, so that his collarbone met the surface.

Loki bit his lip, trying not to appear startled. Thor, conversely, was completely transfixed, and did nothing to hide it. He hovered like a swordfish would in the face of a harpoon. For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Thor asked him if he was going to be alright. Because he had to know.

Loki smiled, faintly. "Yes," he explained, "because of you. I'm going to be just fine."

Thor nodded. Then he flushed, suddenly aware of the vast difference in their knowledge of each other. Thor knew Loki better, he thought, than he knew almost anyone else; Loki didn't even know Thor’s name.

"I'm Thor," he explained, abashed. "...Of Asgard."

"I'm Loki,"

"I know."

Loki nodded, thoughtful. He bit his lip again. "You were there from the start."

Thor assented mutely. _What a shame_ , he thought, _that after all this time, we would finally meet, and I would have nothing at all to say. Apart from, "yes, I've been stalking you for months; and? What of it?"_

But now Loki was smiling, with that smile that said he knew a secret. "I knew it," he said. "I _knew_ it. That day with Skadi. And- and you were there before, weren't you?"

He laughed, shaking his head. "I thought you were going to kill me," he admitted. "When we were in the water."

"I know," said Thor. "I'm sorry." And then, because it was true; "I'm sorry for everything."

Loki just nodded again.

There was a whole world of topics to discuss; problems and solutions, cultural differences - what Loki had been doing for the past three weeks, for one thing. But - after all that apprehension and waiting, all the conflict and fear - in the end, Loki simply extended his hand to Thor in greeting. This was, after all, their first formal introduction.

Thor mimicked the gesture, flapping closer to the shore, and Loki made his way down the sand to meet him.

Then Loki walked into the water, and took Thor’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want you all to know that the original draft of this had Thor spending a night with Loki's dead (drowned) body, not understanding what was wrong with him and begging him to wake up. So, you know... you're welcome.
> 
> Also, I know all this bleeding and blue lipped stuff seems overdramatic, so I want to clarify that Loki had the bends, and was showing actual symptoms of an actual disease, not just, like... randomly breaking down.
> 
> Thanks to LadyLokiLover and Sigynthefaithful for your kind words. You made me blush!
> 
> Reviews, comments, critiques! You know the drill :)
> 
> Thanks for reading.


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